1. Technical Field
The present application relates generally to retail packaging suitable for packaging family or small group sized portions of liquid or flowable products such as juice, milk, syrup, wine, sauces, oils, soup, broth, sugar, salt, confectionery pieces, birdseed, food or non-food particles, pellets, or liquids, skin care products, jewelry beads, BB shot, etc.
2. Background Information
Retail packaging for flowable solid and/or liquid products is commercially available in many styles and sizes e.g. 6-8 ounce single serve juice boxes, stand up pouches (SUPs) containing alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, retort and aseptic boxes for a range of food items such as broths, soups, milk, fruit or vegetable juices or purees, etc. Both food and nonfood retail packages are available in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. For example, metal cans made from aluminum, steel and other materials are well known. Plastic and glass jars, bottles and tubs as well as plastic and paper bags including pouches, envelopes, stick packages, etc. are all ubiquitous in modern commerce. Suitable packaging, e.g. for flowable articles which comprise (i) liquids or (ii) a multitude of small solid products ranging from items such as cinnamon candies to BB shot, should contain the product within the package while protecting the product from contamination and deleterious effects from the external environment. Thus, containers may protect their contents from contact or exposure to unwanted materials such as dirt, dust, microbes, insects, air, moisture, sunlight, etc. Also, the materials used in constructing packaging and especially for a product such as a food (including drink) or drug, the product contact interior surface layer of the package should resist migration of chemicals between the product and the package materials. Examples of prior art packaging include U.S. Pat. Nos. 225,900; 1,157,462; and 3,314,210.
As previously noted, disposable, single serve, drink boxes and beverage pouches are well-known in the art, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 3,380,646 (Doyen). Typically, a drink box comprises a cardboard box, laminated with plastic, and lined with a metal foil or plastic liner that contains a beverage, typically a fruit flavored drink or non-carbonated juice such as apple, grape, or orange juice, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 4,590,126 for an example of a laminate material that may be employed. The beverage product contained in a single serve drink box is typically consumed through a straw. Often a rigid plastic straw is provided with each box for insertion through a hole in the cardboard box which provides an access point for piercing the liner with an end of the straw, see e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,660,737 and 4,778,053.
Similarly, single serve stand up pouches (SUPs) for beverages typically comprise flexible laminates of metal foil and plastic, where e.g. the edges of a folded laminate or a plurality of laminate sheets are sealed together to form a pouch. As with drink boxes, an access point is provided in a small area of the pouch to permit a straw to easily pierce a wall of the pouch to provide access to its contents. Such a pouch is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,583 (Wild); and U.S. Pat. No. 6,116,782 (Arkins et al.)
Thus, many commercially available food products, including fruit juice, wine, milk, tomato puree, etc., are packed in packages which are manufactured using a sterilized packaging material. A typical example of this kind of package is the parallelepipedal packaging container for liquid or pourable food products, which is manufactured by folding and sealing of a laminated packaging material, and which is commercially available from Tetra Pak International SA, Lucernne, Switzerland under the trademarked brand Tetra Brik® Aseptic, or from SIG Combibloc GmbH, Linnich, Germany under the trade name Combibloc® Aseptic. The laminated packaging material comprises layers of paper, which are coated on both sides with a thermoplastic material such as polyethylene. Between the food contact side of the laminated packaging material and the paper layer(s), there is also a layer of an oxygen barrier material, such as e.g., aluminum foil.
Parallepipedal packaging containers of this type are made using packaging filling machines which are fed with laminated packaging material in web form. The packaging material web is sterilized in the packaging machine by the application of a chemical sterilization agent such as e.g., hydrogen peroxide solution. After chemical sterilization, the chemical agent is removed from the packaging material surface, e.g., by heat vaporization. Then the sterilized packaging material is maintained in a sterile environment while being folded and longitudinally sealed to form a tube. This sterile tube is filled with sterilized food product and then transversely sealed and cut into pillow-shaped packages, which are then mechanically folded to form a parallepipedal package.
An example of this type of packaging machine is the TBA19 aseptic filling machine, manufactured by Tetra Brik Packaging Systems, Via Delfini 1, Modena, Italy.
Both single serve, drink boxes and beverage SUPS are intended to be disposable, and, therefore require solid waste disposal. Unlike beverage bottles formed from a recyclable plastic, such as polyethylene terephthalate, laminated drink boxes and SUPS are difficult or impractical to recycle. Laminates of aluminum foil with plastic and often paper in these drink boxes and SUPs present difficulties in separation of the different layers which makes the expense of recycling too great for commercial acceptance.